WASHINGTON – On June 19, Rep. Mike Ross of Arkansas made clear that he and a group of other conservative Democrats known as the Blue Dogs were increasingly unhappy with the direction that health-care legislation was taking in the House.

“The committees’ draft falls short,” the former pharmacy owner said in a statement that day, citing, among other things, provisions that major health-care companies also strongly oppose.

Five days later, Ross was the guest of honor at a special “health-care industry reception,” one of at least seven fundraisers for the Arkansas lawmaker held by health-care companies or their lobbyists this year, according to publicly available invitations.

More at the link.

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Yet another ruling is providing legal support for the false belief that obstetricians are infallible and stripping pregnant women of basic civil rights that are then accorded to other individuals. In the case, New Jersey Division of Youth and Family Services v. V.M. and B.G., the New Jersey appellate court found that V.M. and B.G. had abused and neglected their child, based on the fact that the mother, V.M., refused to consent to a cesarean section and behaved erratically while in labor. The mother gave birth vaginally without incident, and the baby was “in good medical condition.” Then she was never returned to her parents, and the judge in the case approved a plan to terminate their parental rights and give custody of the child to foster parents. What, beyond the obvious, is wrong with this picture?Read the rest of this entry »

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D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier has ordered an internal investigation into a gay man’s arrest for disorderly conduct after the man filed a complaint alleging that an officer detained and arrested him for expressing his dislike for police.

District resident Pepin Tuma, 33, an attorney in private practice, said the arrest took place at 17th and U streets, N.W., shortly after midnight July 26, seconds after a police officer overheard him telling two friends “jokingly” and in a loud voice, “I hate the police.” Tuma said he made the comment in jest as he and two friends, who also are lawyers, were walking to Dupont Circle gay bar Cobalt while talking among themselves about the controversial arrest of Harvard University Professor Henry Louis Gates in Cambridge, Mass., for disorderly conduct.

Police spokesperson Traci Hughes said she could not comment on Tuma’s arrest because it’s a pending case. Hughes said the arresting officer’s version of what happened would be reflected in a police report at the Second District police station, but the report is not a public document and isn’t available to the media or public.

In an e-mail to Lanier, Tuma said that after repeating twice to his friends in a “sing-song” voice, “I hate the police,” an officer “charged 40-50 feet towards us while yelling at me phrases like ‘who do you think you are’ and ‘who do you think you’re talking to.’”

“I said nothing at this time, except asking why I was being detained, whether I was being arrested, and my belief that it was not a crime to offer an opinion to my friends about the police,” Tuma wrote in his e-mail to Lanier.

He said the officer, later identified as Second District Officer J. Culp, pushed him against a transformer box, placed him under arrest and handcuffed him without immediately informing him of the charge.

He said police took him to the Second District station at Connecticut and Idaho avenues, N.W., near the National Cathedral, where he was booked and released about four hours later. He said his release came after he agreed to pay a fine as part of a “post and forfeit” plea, which is an acknowledgement of possible guilt.

So if the guy doesn’t want to sit in jail until a judge can hear the case, the cops get to keep the money whether he’s “guilty” (of not liking cops) or not.

Seriously, the cops have WAY too much power. Take the guns off the hips of the ‘beat cops” and the “traffic cops”. Let ’em carry them in their trunks, unloaded, where THAT’S allowed, just like any other citizen.

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The wingnuts are accusing the media of being in bed with Obama and the Democrats. If that’s true, why isn’t the media pointing out that a cop arresting someone who they know is in their own home, isn’t threatening anyone, and isn’t generating complaints from neighbors for “disturbing the peace” is unconstitutional? Why are they sticking with the “racism in America” angle? Can’t answer that one? Try this:

Why is it anyone who read’s only the first few sentences of this story, in virtually any media outlet, would come away with the idea that “doctors are opposed to health care reform” when exactly the opposite is true?

Buried halfway through the 3rd paragraph is this: “Scheiner is an advocate of single-payer health care systems.” In paragraph 4: “Insurance companies interfere with his work more than the government does, even though he works with both.”

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PARIS (AFP) – Biomedical researchers on Wednesday said they could explain why we swing our arms when we walk, a practice that has long piqued scientific curiosity.

Swinging one’s arms comes at a cost. We need muscles to do it, and we need to provide energy in the form of food for those muscles. So what’s the advantage?

Little or none, some experts have said, contending that arm-swinging, like our appendix, is an evolutionary relic from when we used to go about on all fours.

But a trio of specialists from the United States and the Netherlands have put the question to rigorous tests.

They built a mechanical model to get an idea of the dynamics of arm-swinging and then recruited 10 volunteers, who were asked to walk with a normal swing, an opposite-to-normal swing, with their arms folded or held by their sides.

The metabolic cost of this activity was derived from oxygen consumption and carbon dioxide (CO2) production as the human guinea pigs breathed in and out.

Arm-swinging turned out to be a plus, rather than a negative, the investigators found. (More at the link).

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After many a disappointment with someone, and especially after a disaster, we may be able to look back at numerous clues that should have warned us that the person we trusted did not deserve our trust.

When that person is the president of the United States, the potential for disaster is virtually unlimited.

Many people are rightly worried about what this administration’s reckless spending will do to the economy in our time and to our children and grandchildren, to whom a staggering national debt will be passed on. But if the worst that Barack Obama does is ruin the economy, I will breathe a sigh of relief.

He is heading this country toward disaster on many fronts, including a nuclear Iran, which has every prospect of being an irretrievable disaster of almost unimaginable magnitude. We cannot put that genie back in the bottle — and neither can generations yet unborn. They may yet curse us all for leaving them hostages to nuclear terror.

snip

During a recent TV interview, when President Obama was asked about the prospects of victory in Afghanistan, he replied that it would not be victory like in World War II, with “Hirohito coming down and signing a surrender to MacArthur.”

In reality, it was not Emperor Hirohito who surrendered on the battleship Missouri. American troops were already occupying Japan before Hirohito met Gen. Douglas MacArthur for the first time.

This is not the first betrayal of his ignorance by Obama, nor the first overlooked by the media. Moreover, ignorance by itself is not nearly as bad as charging full steam ahead, pretending to know. Barack Obama is doing that on a lot of issues, not just history or a local police incident in Massachusetts.

While the mainstream media in America will never call him on this, these repeated demonstrations of his amateurism and immaturity will not go unnoticed by this country’s enemies around the world. And it is the American people who will pay the price.